The Department of Defense lost $8.5 trillion dollars without explanation | TRUTH

The department of defense is solely responsible for defending our country against domestic and foreign threats. Whenever there is imminent threat or a breach of war, this department has the immense responsibility to develop any means of defense such as weapons, military grade vehicles, tanks, jets, etc. The headquarters of this department is the Pentagon and developing these means of defense is not cheap. But since 1996, the DOD has no track or recollection of what it did with $8.5 trillion dollars. If you didn’t catch that the first time maybe you will when I say it again. The Department of Defense which is a government official organization that is responsible for keeping our country safe has lost $8.5 TRILLION dollars! So how does the Pentagon get away with losing track of all these numbers? Aren’t they supposed to keep audits and have all those numbers on record? Even though it was mandated by law in 1996 for all federal agencies to keep an audit, the Pentagon somehow had special immunity to that rule and had different methods in mind. After an investigation of employees of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (This is the head accounting agency for the Pentagon) it was brought to light that they were told by superiors to basically plug in numbers that would line up numbers for military spending with the Treasury’s when the discrepancies could not be either traced or accounted for. These superiors, whom have the grand responsibility to make the proper safety decisions for the American people told their employees to make false claims when inputting the numbers for defense spending so that no one could keep record or track of where the hard working American’s taxes went. Sooner or later the conscious of some of these individuals working at the Pentagon arose and were tired of this irresponsible “mistakes.” In 2014 it was announced that the military’s budget would be cut by $52 billion, but Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in a conference quoted, “The cuts are too deep, too steep, and too abrupt.

This is an irresponsible way to govern and it forces the department to make a very bad set of choices.” Put this fact into consideration before I plug in the numbers. America leads the world in three categories (majority of which are bad) and one of them is defense spending. For that year of 2014, $518 billion dollars were spent, which totaled more than 10 of the biggest spenders combined (this includes Countries such as Russia, China and Saudi Arabia). Even though the DOD did not lose the money, the irresponsible decision to plug in false numbers allowed them to spend $1.59 trillion in error for the Air Force in 2009, let the Department Logistics Agency stockpile 15,000 Humvee front suspensions in 2008 (which is enough for a 14 year supply) and later add an additional 7,437 more of the same parts but for an even higher cost. The DLA is responsible for supplying parts for the DOD, but they are notorious for excessively spending on duplicate parts. In 2011, the DLA spent $609 million on duplicates and that increased 21% in 2012 to $733million. Despite how ghastly these numbers are, there is another sick comparison. The safety and security of the American people is the number one priority for our country, but we all know that going into war is unjustified and that violence isn’t always the best solution. Here is a simple statistic that may shock you. It was recorded in 2013 that 45.3 million people are living in poverty, and 14.7 million children help make up that. This makes up 14.5% of our population which is the highest in statistics ever tracked for 52 years. Taking care of those in poverty should be the highest priority in America right now because these people have no means of finding another meal or another place to live. Instead of addressing this issue, politicians rather focus on the senseless spending of food stamps and creating laws to prohibit certain foods from being purchased. Isn’t it just a “little” outrageous that the Pentagon is abusing and utilizing its power out of control with our tax payer money? With the superfluous amounts of military grade vehicles (22,437) or just for the matter of the $8.5 trillion unaccounted for, shouldn’t we be just a little bit concerned?

(All statistics and sources cited are accredited to TheAntiMedia.org)

Written by:

Journalist/Editor

-Alexander Lee

Share this:

Related

Journalist and editor of globally trending stories and events. As a psychology degree graduate and former legal assistant, Alexander Lee utilizes his knowledge of law and psychology to analyze stories and events. Click his stories to obtain a new perspective on what going on the world today.